


a question of duty

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Disassociation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Not Canon Compliant, Pregnancy, Recovery, Sex, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 06:29:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20792165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Jaime doesn’t help in the Riverlands — but maybe he can help after.*tags are honest, but all violence occurs significantly off-screen, including childbirth. i have zero interest in the sort of porn that involves women screaming in pain.





	a question of duty

**Author's Note:**

> written 26-27 September 2019, on a normal keyboard like a real human being

Jaime warned her -- didn't he? -- and nothing he says would make any difference anyway.

He watches the logs burn and break apart, hearing the noise of fists meeting flesh, listening to her screaming until she goes quiet.

When they drag her back into the warm circle of light made by the dying fire, she is barely conscious, bloody and bruised, her gaze vacant.

It doesn't matter. He cannot meet her eyes.

  
*

  
In the morning they arrive at Harrenhal.

She looks worse than the night before, if possible. One eye is completely shut and the other is a tiny slit.

“Cut her free," says Roose Bolton.

"She's a prisoner."

Bolton looks at Hoat like he's never seen such a damned fool in his life. "Cut her free, I said." He tilts his head, looking down at Brienne in the mud. "My apologies, my lady. These men are not always as gentle as they might be."

Jaime says something clever.

Hoat backhands him.

Bolton sighs. "Enough of this. _Enough_."

  
*

  
Kings Landing.

Brienne has her own chambers, a room set apart from most of the others, with a strong thick door and a strong thick bar to lay across it. She has baths brought up whenever she wants, the rather revolting hands of maester Pycelle to wrap her broken ribs and dress her wounded arm, food and wine and company if she asks for it or silence if she doesn't.

She doesn't ask.

Jaime walks past her door a dozen times a day and tries to knock and decides against it, tries to knock and decides against it, tries to knock and tries to knock and tries again to knock.

  
*

  
Ser Bors is on duty -- relieving Jaime of the tedious pastime of standing in full armor outside a closed door for hours. Freeing him to drink with Tyrion.

Tyrion doesn't need company to drink, but Jaime does. He doesn't like to go at it alone. It reminds him too much of things he doesn't want to remember, the way Cersei hasn't been seen without a wine glass in her hand since Myrcella was born, the way Tyrion is always drunk or on the edge of it, the way Jaime himself feels it calling to him, haunting him, an echo of what he wants. Another door he decides not to knock on lest someone answer.

Tonight he drinks.

They aren't talking much. Both of them are talkers, it's another bad Lannister habit, but alone they usually lapse into silence. They know each other well enough, they love each other well enough -- what is there to talk about?

Jaime gets up. "More wine?" -- and pours both cups full without waiting for a response, steadying the almost-full pitcher with his left hand, pouring with his right.

"When is she leaving?" says Tyrion.

"Who?"

"Your ... the lady. Brienne."

"Gods pity the man who has her as his lady. What _leaving?_ What do you mean? Where is she going?"

"Returning to Tarth and the bosom of her family. Presumably it's a softer bosom than we have here, and with fewer venomous snakes. Didn't you know?"

Jaime shrugs. What Brienne does, or doesn't do, isn't any business of his, is it? "I haven't spoken to her."

Tyrion pauses mid-sip, an odd expression on his face. "Since when?"

"What are you not telling me?"

  
*

  
And now he has a reason to knock.

\-- not that Brienne answers.

It's immensely rude of her, and that isn't at all normal behavior -- which means she knows full well who is outside her door, and she's ignoring him deliberately.

He knocks harder. "Brienne, open the door. _Brienne_. Brienne, answer the _door_, you stupid ugly stubborn mannish arrogant --"

She opens it then, and her face is tight and angry. "Arrogant? You, Jaime Lannister, call me arrogant."

"Finally." He pushes past her. Sees the state of the room. "You're packing."

"I am leaving. You are intruding."

"Is that any way to speak to a knight of the realm?"

"Beg pardon, Ser Jaime. Is there anything I can help you with at present? You are intruding on my work."

"You didn't tell me you were leaving."

Brienne takes a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly and sitting on the neatly-made bed. "I'm returning to Tarth. My father wants me to -- my father would see me."

"Will you come back to Kings Landing?"

"I have no plans to do so."

He stares at her a moment, then jerks his chin. "Come with me. Lord Tywin wants you."

And he drags an argumentative, red-faced Brienne behind him, protesting every step of the way.

  
*

  
"I have spoken to the Queen," Tywin says by way of greeting.

"As have I," says Jaime.

Brienne is very very stiff. "My lord, there is really no need for me to be any further burden on your gracious hospitality. I thank you for the help and attention."

"Cersei is releasing you from your vows as a Kingsguard." Tywin considers his son. "You agree with my decision? You will make no attempts to back out of this?"

"I see no better choice."

Brienne is constitutionally unable to interrupt a conversation between her betters, Jaime sees that, and her furious ignorance makes him smile for the first time in ... how long? Too long. "Brienne, I will accompany you to Tarth to see your father."

"That really is unnecessary."

"On the contrary. It is a courtesy from one house to another. And circumstances being what they are ... your father will want to meet his new son. And of course, to be there for the birth of his first grandchild."

He is watching close enough to see her face close off -- snap -- all the light going out of it, like someone has blown out the candle behind her eyes. Her cheeks drain of color; even her lips go pale and grey. She clutches the back of a chair. "I do not want to marry you, and I will not."

"About as much as I want you, wench."

Tywin intercedes. "Pycelle said you're with child. Is that true?"

"Yes, my lord. But the child is not ser Jaime's. He and I -- we never ..."

"You traveled alone with him."

The insinuation makes her cheeks flood with color again. "He was my prisoner. That was all."

"We had plenty of time to fuck," says Jaime. "So many days I could have been inside you." He lowers his voice. "So many nights, Brienne."

"Hold your foul tongue," snaps his father. 

"Lord Tywin, there is no need for you -- for Jaime -- I do not need a husband."

"Your father disagrees. I have his message here," gesturing to the desk. "Lord Selwyn reminds you that you are the heir to Evenfell, even if you don't want to be. Just as Jaime is the heir to Casterly Rock." Tywin looks at his son. "You'll own this child?"

Jaime shrugs. "Well enough."

"Then we are in agreement. Lady Brienne, you'll accompany us to the sept and the thing will be done without further delay."

  
*

  
Jaime wakes up the first morning of his married life to find his wife vomiting into a bucket. Bleary-eyed, rubbing at his face, he pours out a cup of water and gives it to her when she is finished.

She has not spoken more than an abolute minimum of words to him since he settled the cloak on her shoulders, and the dearth shows no signs of ending.

"I didn't think you'd be one for seasickness," he says, when she is able to sit up again.

"It's the child."

He bites his lip and regrets it: she hit him across the face last night when he tried to kiss her, hard enough to split his mouth open. Brienne (he is learning) is not one for tenderness.

Still ... "Would you like something to eat -- tea, or bread?" Ginger root, he remembers, and twice-baked bread. Cersei ate nothing else for the first several months of each pregnancy.

Brienne bends over the bucket again at the mention of food.

Jaime rubs her back. "This will pass," he tells her. "It always does."

When she's able to speak, she says to him: "If you touch me again, I will be sick in your lap every single morning until the baby is born."

"I don't mean anything by it."

"Then don't do it," she says. "Keep your goddamned hands to yourself."

And that's the end of it for the day.

  
*

  
In the night she hits him again, kicking and thrashing and whimpering in her dreaming. He shakes her and she yells, waking herself, staring at him.

"You touched me."

"I didn't -- I didn't mean to. I was asleep. I'm not going to hurt you."

"You touched me," she repeats: and bursts into tears.

Jaime is moved, horrified, frightened; he doesn't know what to do. This isn't a Brienne he's known before. She's always certain, always quick to move and angry if someone tries to move against her, even in the forest, even then ... "Brienne?" he says. "Don't cry like that."

She curls up, legs brought tight against her belly, sobbing: and Jaime reaches out again, pushes her hair out of her face, wraps an arm around her shoulders and then pulls her nearer, saying nonsense into her ear while she weeps, while he's talking, until the ship rocks them both into quiet and silence at last.

  
*

  
Lord Selwyn is not at all what Jaime expected.

He's tall -- but no taller than Jaime; he's broad -- no wider than his daughter; and he looks weather-beaten in a way that brings to mind sailors and farmers. People of the land. And his grip is sure and strong, shaking _hello_.

"My lord," says Jaime.

"Ser," says Selwyn, staring down his new son.

He considers his daughter next.

Brienne looks (to Jaime's faithful eye) absolutely terrible. Her clothes hang off her, vibrant purple rings have bloomed under her eyes to tell about sleepless nights, and there's nothing glad or happy about her expression. "Father."

"Daughter," he says.

Jaime almost laughs: they make the Lannisters look over-demonstrative.

Silently they walk up the path from the cliffs and go into Evenfell.

  
*

  
In the afternoon, they go to the tower. They are the highest point for miles, seeing clear across the island and to the horizon, and even Jaime admits the view is worth the trouble of climbing a hundred steps.

"There are only seventy-eight," says Brienne, looking out.

"It felt like three hundred."

"Not half so many."

The wind comes in hard here and whips her hair around her face, fills it with sunlight, bringing out every flaw.

He makes himself stare at this woman -- his wife. _I am hers and she is mine._ It didn't seem real in the sept and it didn't seem real on the ship, but here on her island it is different. She is different.

"Can we see to Kings Landing?" he says, to prevent himself from saying ... something else.

"No."

"Nearly, though." There's a grey-blue line on the horizon. Home.

"No," says Brienne. "And you're facing the wrong direction. It would be there."

Jaime looks. She's right: he sees nothing except blue water, capped by tiny white waves, and the bright glitter of light coming low from the west.

"Do you miss it?"

"I've hardly had a chance to miss it."

Her voice is low and tight, like someone else is going to hear. "You didn't have to marry me. I would have been fine."

He doesn't answer.

"You could still leave."

"Are you suggesting I impune my honor even further, wife? Perish the thought."

"Don't call me that. I'm saying, this is none of your concern." Gesturing at her body, her stomach. "You don't need to be ... you didn't hurt me."

How steady her voice is. How neatly she evades the words _rape, bastard, father unknown._ He could almost forget the way she sobbed in her nightmares. He says: "I didn't help you. In the forest. The Riverlands. I didn’t _help_."

Her throat is a long straight line; her chin doesn't shake at all. "I didn't expect you to."

  
*

  
Jaime should be used to sharing a bed with her by now -- what that means. This bed is large and beautiful, its four posters made from driftwood that might have been ship's beams at one point. They might have come from Kings Landing. It is necessity made beautiful: there is so little wood on Tarth. The bedcover and linens match the grey-brown-blue tint of the weathered boards, and catch the color of the tapestry on the wall.

Brienne strips, her back to him.

He stares at her. The candlelight is kinder than sunlight, he thinks; the flame moves gentle, licking the edges of her form. "Dare I ask about my marital rights?"

"Not unless you want to be knocked down."

"We have to sometime, Brienne."

"There's a coming heir, ser Jaime. You can cut that thing off your body for all the good it'll do you."

"I could find a whore," he says; his tone is vicious -- he wonders at it. He doesn't even want her. But being denied is like acid coiling in his gut.

"You may do as you please, so long as it isn't with me." His wife leans forward and blows out the candle, leaving him in the dark.

  
*

  
They practice with swords in the mornings as soon as Brienne's nausea has subsided, and afternoons before supper. It's the only time they are together without arguing.

He knocks her down and she tumbles, rolling, gasping for breath.

He hesitates. That's _Brienne_ in the dirt but it's also his wife, and she's with child -- not his child, but -- "Do you need help?"

She swears at him, climbing to her feet, calling him a _cheating shit fucker._

Jaime smiles.

  
*

  
Sometime in spring he does visit women in town: because why shouldn't he?

He tells her after the first time, like a child coming to his septa for confession.

They're getting ready for bed, and Brienne is braiding her hair -- it's grown long, sweeping down past her shoulders. "Good for you, Jaime. Should we send a raven to your father?"

"I thought you would want to know."

"Did you? Why should you think I would care?"

He can't answer that. There's no reason, none at all.

  
*

  
She stops dead in the middle of a spar and drops her sword and Jaime nearly runs her through with his own. He throws it before the conscious thought comes in and now he's yelling at her _What the fuck is wrong with you what are you thinking Brienne --_

She's standing with one hand on her mouth and the other on her stomach, eyes huge. "It moved."

Oh.

Shame creeps in: he feels sick. It's another sharp edge of reality, another thing he's tried to ignore. "You haven't felt it before now?"

She shakes her head No, then nods Yes. "I thought -- maybe? I don't know. I wasn't sure."

"You're certain now."

Yes.

He wants to touch her, draw her to the ledge, make her sit down. She wouldn't appreciate any of that. He clears his throat. "Are you alright?"

"Fine. It only startled me."

"Fighting with true swords is not a time to be startled."

"We were sparring, not fighting," she says. Her tone is still absent. "It feels like a fish. Like I swallowed a fish, and it's swimming."

"Are you happy?"

"No."

"Are you -- upset?"

"No. Just surprised. It -- it's such a new feeling." She looks at him then. "Are you upset?"

"No," he says, brief. "Just try to have your _new feelings_ when someone's not coming at you with honed steel." He takes up his sword then and sheathes it, leaving Brienne alone to watch him go.

  
*

  
"Jaime?"

He's come in late, coming from another woman's bed, and he's so tired he thinks at first he dreamt her voice. But she speaks again.

"Are you awake?"

"What is it?"

She takes his hand and presses it to her stomach and yes, there's a fluttering fishy feeling, yes.

Jaime shuts his eyes.

This isn't his child, not really. Not in the ways that matter. (But are Joffrey and Myrcella and Tommen his children, either?) "Brienne," he says. He means to ask her again if she's happy, if she still wants him to leave, if she thinks he is hurting her ...

Instead of all that, she kisses him -- and immediately apologizes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean --"

He kisses her back. And then it's heat and hands and absolutely no conversation, nothing at all, until he’s inside her and she cries out, muffled under her own hand.

He freezes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Are you —“

She pushes up to catch him deeper, huffing out hot breath, wrapping a leg around his hip.

Jaime doesn’t bother to ask questions after that.

*

It’s not the best sex he’s ever had but it’s far from the worst, and the only thing he really wants to complain of is how Brienne turns away at once when they’re finished, refusing to answer when he speaks to her.

At last he settles against her back, nose in her hair, smelling the sweat they made, understanding nothing.

*

  
The next night he tries again and she pushes him away -- "No!"

And Jaime stares at the nape of her neck, the way her hair falls in curls, the way it looks soft and sweet.

So little of Brienne is soft. Why shouldn't he have this sight of her?

  
*

  
They're fighting again, sparring really, with blunt practice swords because Jaime refuses to use a edged blade while she's like this, no matter how much she glares at him.

She isn't doing very well. Slow on her feet today and strangely clumsy, which isn't only the new weight of the belly that's suddenly evident and protruding in front of her; she looks distracted.

An hour into it she snaps at him. "I'm fine. Stop looking at me like that."

"Like that," he gasps -- she's slower but no weaker.

"Like I'm pathetic. Like I'm _fragile_."

"I didn't. I'm _not_."

She goes to argue again and instead puts a hand to her stomach, below the swell of it. She's gone pale. "Jaime?"

"Sit down -- sit down. Stop worrying about the swords. Sit."

She's groping for the low wall, holding still with the pain, bent at the waist: and he sees blood on the seat of her trousers

calls for the maester

and can do nothing, nothing, only watch as she's half-carried indoors, moaning aloud.

  
*

  
How pale she is; how deep her eyes are.

He sets the candle down on the side-table and undresses quiet.

She says his name.

"I thought you were asleep."

No.

"I _hoped_ you were asleep."

"I was waiting for you."

Something twists in his chest. "You should rest."

"I was waiting for you," she says again.

"How do you feel?"

"Tired," she whispers. "I'm so tired."

"I can sleep --"

"No."

He can't think of anything to say. He can't say what he wants to say.

She says: "The child is moving again."

"It stopped?"

"They sleep, my father says. Jaime. The bleeding -- I thought --"

"I know."

She stares at his face.

He says: "Are you -- is that what you wanted? For it to die?"

Brienne doesn't reply for a long time, she only keeps looking at him. Finally she says: "I wanted it gone. And when it started to leave, I wanted it to stay. Isn't that foolish?"

He shakes his head. Lets himself touch her hair, push it back behind her ear. "It's not foolish at all."

"You liar." And she kisses him -- softly -- not at all like before, not like she’s ever done to him.

  
*

  
They're in the dark and talking low.

"I'm sorry this happened. Did I ever say that? In the Riverlands, did I ever say ..."

"You didn't need to say it."

"Brienne," he says, pained. "I should have. At the least, I should have done that much."

"I knew it. And it doesn't matter. Do you think I want sympathy?"

"No." But what else could he give her?

Marriage. Legitimacy.

It still wasn't enough.

He asks -- he has to ask -- he shouldn't ask but he does -- "When they, when we were in the Riverlands, when ... did you do what I told you? Did you _go away?"_

"No."

"Brienne."

"I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to stop feeling my body, Jaime. _I'm not you_. I can't just stop caring, I can't just close off like you do -- I can't just smile and accept horrible things -- I don't know how you do that, how do you even _want_ to do that --"

"Stop crying," he says, "please stop crying," because she's shaking all over, how can he do anything for this? how can he do anything but hold her?

"When I was a child," he says, "our mother died. I was very young, six or seven, but I remember her." Six years old, yes; because at seven he was given a sword and Cersei was given a beautiful new gown and neither one of them smiled at all because there was a new baby squalling all the time and no mother, there would never be a mother for them again.

She was the only one who'd ever loved him really.

"Afterwards, after that is when Cersei and I began to -- to be together. Grief, I suppose. I could call it grief. It was more than that. It was the only place I could go where I stopped feeling. And for her too. After we fucked everything went quiet."

Eventually he learned to do it anywhere. He could just dissolve out of his body whenever he liked. At the supper table, for example. Or when a man was burning alive inside his own armor. Or when a woman was crying out in pain.

And then a trick became a habit, and the habit slipped out of his grasp. He'd be fighting and lose track of time, lose track of himself, waking up later bloody and blind to what had happened. Wake in Cersei's bed, the sting of her hand still hot on his face. Wake during a meeting.

Wake in the woods, tied to a tree, while Brienne fought and lost the fight, just out of his view.

"I felt everything," she says. "Everything, every one of them, every thing that they did I was awake for and I can't bear it, I can't think of it without screaming, I don't remember if I said or did anything when they were -- when it was happening, in my dreams I can't make any noise at all ..."

He lets her talk, he does't interrupt. He holds her until the story ends.

And then he keeps holding on.

  
*

In the morning she wakes him with her mouth on his, and then she is sliding down his body — looking anything but graceful — but her hands grip on his hips and her mouth goes around his cock and there is no more question of grace or gratitude or even his willingness to ask this of her, accept this from her.

Jaime dissolves.

“Stay with me,” she says. And she holds his gaze until his eyes close again, he’s moaning, and now she sinks down onto him, brushing the hair back. _Stay_.

  
"Brienne," he tries to say afterwards. "Talk to me." p_We need to talk about last night, _he wants to say_. We need to talk about this morning._

But she dresses quick and slips away.

  
*

  
She gives up sparring in the last month, saying it's too much, her body hurts all over, she can barely even walk. The enforced rest makes her irritable and touchy. "Stop bringing me things!" she shouts at Jaime. "Stop asking how you can help! Just leave me alone!" And punctuates it by throwing at him the nearest-thing-to-hand.

Later on she's crying again and he sits with her. He doesn't know what else to do. I should have done something, he thinks for the hundredth or thousandth time, looking at her red-faced. I should have done something.

Brienne sighs.

She still hasn't thought of a name, she still won't accept a gift of tiny clothing or a rattle or a conversation about children. _You know this is going to happen,_ he wants to say to her. _You can't ignore it forever._

The child kicks hard; he sees her stomach jolt.

"Do you think it's a boy?" he says.

"I don't know."

"You think it's a girl."

"I don't know, Jaime." Her eyes are closed; her lashes look dark against her cheeks. "I don't want to talk about this."

"I'll love it. I don't care what it is -- whose it is. I'll love it like my own child."

She opens her eyes at that. "You're good at loving the unloveable. I know. I know that. I've seen that." She rubs her thumb over the swollen skin. "At least one of us will love it."

"Is that what you're afraid of? Brienne, there's nothing cruel about you. Nothing. You'll see its little face and fall in love faster than you thought was --"

"I don't want to love it," she says. "And I can't bear not to. Everything is impossible, there's no way forward out of it. Everything brings me further into the circle. It's just like with --" She stops.

He can't breathe, he can't ask what she was going to say, he knows what she was going to say but it can't be that it can't. "Brienne --"

"Leave me alone," she says, tired.

So he goes.

  
*

  
A week later she sends him into the town for something-or-other that she certainly doesn't need, that he doesn't realize she doesn't need until he's gone to the third shop for it and still can't find that particular item, remembering her tense face in his mind --

"It has to be you, Jaime. I can't trust anyone else"

\-- and knows for sure he's right when he isn't permitted back inside Evenfell.

  
*

  
In the late afternoon, Selwyn joins him. "A fine day, isn't it?"

Jaime is not in the mood for small talk. "Why are _you_ able to go in and out, and -- I'm her _husband_!"

"If you understood Brienne as well as you think that you do," says her father, "you wouldn't have been taken in by such a trick."

The people of Tarth do not mince words. "How much longer?"

"It rained all day when she was born. Stormed, truly. All I could do was pace the halls and listen." He regards the sunset, dripping orange into the water. "That was a very long day."

"If she wouldn't be furious with me, I'd -- I'd --"

"But you won't do any of those things, will you? You'll wait out here like a good boy because she told you so."

Noise from inside.

Jaime rubs his face. He can’t take much more waiting. "How long does this go on?"

"Until it's over."

  
*

  
Brienne is asleep when he is finally permitted to look at her, and the room is bright with new day.

He stands a long time, looking at her face.

Then he goes to find his daughter.

*

“Why did you agree to marry him?” says Selwyn. They’re watching Jaime, all unaware of them watching.

Brienne turns blue eyes on him. “I thought you wanted me to.”

“When did you start caring what I want?”

“Always.”

“We could have found someone else. Or go it alone. We still could, Brienne. Say the word and I’ll have him pushed off the White Cliffs.”

She shakes her head, smiling.

“Do you love him?”

“I trust him,” says Brienne, still looking down.

“Does he love you?”

“I know him,” she says again. “I trust him.”

And they watch together as Jaime’s bright head bends over the child’s darker one, saying something too quiet for them to hear.

**Author's Note:**

> um. jaime’s easy relationship to “monsters and freaks” (including Cersei and Tyrion) is really dear to me, and part of that is how he doesn’t at all blame brienne for being attacked or the consequences — he just isn’t an asshole in that particular way. (other ways, yes. but not THAT way.)
> 
> i don’t know exactly how brienne would deal with a pregnancy leading from multiple violent assault, or her opinion on parenting. but i know she would trust jaime to love the child. 
> 
> *
> 
> Selwyn (and Tyrion) are here modeled directly on my friend J, who is about as openly demonstrative as a plant or a star or any other beautiful & independent thing.


End file.
